Guilt and Postpartum Depression
Symptom relief and guilt can coexist.
Depression is a beast. Anyone who suffers from depressive episodes understands how they sneak up on you. Just when you begin to enjoy relief from darkness, there it is again to smack you in the face. I’ve been on this rollercoaster since young adulthood, but I only sought help after the birth of my children.
Before bringing my twins into the world, I was able to cope with my depression with things like yoga, days of rest, hiking, and vacations when possible. After their birth, things got dicey. I worked very hard on my own to stay afloat, but eventually, things caught up with me and it became impossible to navigate it alone.
I thought a diagnosis would bring some relief. After all, I had been fighting postpartum depression on my own for a year, so technically I was now in the jaws of typical ‘major depressive disorder’ — the term the doc. put to paper. I found out that if it’s over a year past your child’s birth, it’s no longer the ‘postpartum period’, but I knew this all melded together: One difficult situation begot another, and suddenly, I was trapped. But once I finally got a diagnosis and had a course of action, I did feel a huge sense of relief. And it was a fantastic feeling.
